


Kiss From A Rose

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aliens With Strangely Mundane Names, Embedded Images, F/F, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Assorted Aliens, Jo Is Missy's Daughter, Masterversary 2020, Mild Blood, Minor Missy/Clara Oswin Oswald, Minor The Doctor/Missy (Doctor Who), Minor Violence, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Prison, Sapphics Doing Crime, Unrelated to Revolution of the Daleks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28946556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: My Masterversary Big Bang fic that has too much Rose content.Rose, Missy, Clara, and Jo Grant attempt to rescue the Doctor from a space prison; Rose deals with weirdly fluttery feelings for Clara; aliens are threatened; and strikes are considered.
Relationships: Clara Oswin Oswald/Rose Tyler, Jo Grant & Missy, Jo Grant & Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Missy/Clara Oswin Oswald/Rose Tyler, Thirteenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Fiftieth Masterversary Big Bang





	Kiss From A Rose

**Author's Note:**

> title from a song i am too uncool to properly know, Seal's "Kiss From A Rose." Beta'ed by @androktasia on AO3 (@petercapaldish on tumblr). 
> 
> space prison is purely a coincidence. this fic has nothing to do with the new year's special.
> 
> art by faerthingpen, and you can find it here as well: https://faerthingpen.tumblr.com/post/641406288086073344/i-took-part-in-the-50th-masterversary-big-bang-a

In the Belrilles Museum, at half past the second moon—lights out, floors cleared, staff gone—Rose Tyler breaks into the art wing.

Every step sounds too loud to her inexperienced ears. Every move too sudden. She chews her bottom lip, thinks about how dry and chapped it is. She turns up the volume in her earpiece, and a familiar Scottish voice snaps:

“Get your hands away from my coffee!”

Rose shakes her head and continues to search the plaques, stopping for the barest second to admire a gold-plated suit of armor with holes in the back for wings, while Missy and Jo argue in her ear.

“It’s my coffee _._ ”

“It’s not your coffee!”

She rounds the corner, her mind drifting off—first mistake. _“You can’t ever let yourself slip,”_ Missy had said, when she’d first taught Rose the art of burglary. _“Slip for one second, and you’re gone for.”_

 _“And you think I’ll be good at this?”_ Rose had asked, watching Missy’s sapphire blue eyes for any hint of doubt.

Missy had only laughed. _“No.”_

Now, Rose lets out a squeak as her shoulder slams into someone else. Her heart sets to pounding, and she twirls around, expecting the harsh beam of a security guard’s torch. Instead, she sees a small, mouse-like woman, dressed in black.

“God,” hisses Clara Oswald. “You really _can’t_ stay quiet.”

Rose’s cheeks flame, and guilt coils in her gut. “You were supposed to meet me at the entrance,” she protests. Missy had encouraged her to go in without Clara, saying, _“Things go wrong,”_ and Rose hadn’t had the focus to argue.

“Things came up.”

Rose rolls her eyes—what things?—but Clara presses a finger to her glossy lips instead. Lipstick for a break-in. Rose can’t decide what emotion she’s feeling.

“Did you find the ring?” Clara asks, her eyes scanning the exhibits around them. Her voice is brief, quick, no-nonsense. Rose wishes she had the clarity of thought for even a sliver of that confidence right now.

“Not yet.” Rose tugs her fur-lined jacket around her shoulders, even though the museum interior is heated perfectly well. It gives her something to do with her hands, which feel restless, as if some nervous energy is built up in her muscles that just won’t go away.

Clara doesn’t spare the time for another criticism, but Rose can feel the sting anyway. She strides away, leaving Rose in the dark hallway, next to that golden suit of armor, and Rose has no choice but to follow.

“Book,” mutters Clara under her breath, as they pass a large tome embedded with scales and huge gemstones. “Rock. Tiara. Mug. Where the _fuck_ is this ring?”

In Rose’s ear, Jo and Missy’s bickering continues. _“See, I feel like you didn’t listen to the briefing, and I’m feeling very ig—”_

Rose turns down the volume.

“Found it!” Clara announces, somewhere ahead of her. Rose has half a mind to shush her, but the thought escapes her when she lays eyes on that glorious glittering ring. Even though the museum closed a good hour or two ago, a single light still illuminates it, set into a dark turquoise holder. Too big for a human, Rose thinks, but the shape is familiar nonetheless, and she adjusts her own wedding band with an aching heart. “Now, how the everloving—”

“Smash the glass,” says Rose.

Clara looks over to her, grimaces in the dim murkiness of the darkened museum, a small trickle of light washing over her cheek from the ring exhibit. “I can’t do that.”

“Smash the _glass_ ,” says Rose again. She remembers what Missy said, laughing, when she expressed her worries about getting caught.

_“And you think I’ll be good at this?”_

_“No. That’s why I picked you.”_

Clara frowns.

Rose reaches into her coat pocket, where she had hidden a large crystalline rock a few hours before entering the museum. “Cover your ears,” she says, hoping she sounds like the Doctor, and she throws the rock as hard as she can at the display.

Immediately, an alarm begins to blare from the ceiling, and both Rose and Clara stumble away as glittering shards tumble to the floor in a sharp mockery of snowfall.It’s too loud for Rose to focus, and she can hear her heart pounding too loud in her ears, and she can’t remember how to run, and she can’t hear anything else…

And then it stops. Rose can hear her breathing as her chest heaves, lungs struggling to pump in air as quickly as her panicked body demands it. “Do you think,” she says in the sudden silence, “That we’ve done something wrong?

“Broke into a museum,” Clara says. “Usually frowned upon.”

Rose can’t think of anything to say to that.

The sound of boots storming down the corridor, saves her from having to formulate a response. A bright, violent light blinds Rose for a moment. Once her eyes adjust, a group of four-eyed Belrillians stand in front of her and Clara. Their feathers are thick and dark, their thick, embellished vests mark them as _POLICE_ , and as Rose and Clara turn to face them, they raise their guns in a shuffling unison. Probably dangerous, Rose thinks, a thrill running through her.

Clara smirks at them. “Good evening.”

“You’re under arrest,” one of them barks.

Rose exchanges a look with Clara.

Behind the crowded officers, a woman clears her throat. “Aw, leaving us out of all the fun. Isn’t that rude, my dear?”

“Very,” agrees another voice.

Missy elbows her way to the front, her arm locked with Jo’s, and she offers Rose and Clara a winning smile. “Hello, girls,” she says. “Sorry we’re late. Went to get another coffee.”

The officer startles, his top pair of eyes widening. “You’re also under arrest,” he informs them.

Missy gestures with her free hand, in a graceful but entirely useless motion. “Did you take my umbrella?” she asks the group at large. No one answers her, and she tuts. “Never mind.” She shakes Jo off her elbow, smiles at the police officers, her small, usually intimidating stature dwarfed in proportion with the huge Belrillians.

A moment passes, and she lunges at the officer, twisting the gun out of his hands with an awful crack and stomping on it with a heeled boot, laughing wildly. She snaps her head back to Rose and Clara, who are standing by, tense but weaponless. She raises an eyebrow. “Ladies?”

They back up, and Rose rushes back towards the ring exhibit, scraping shards of broken glass away, searching for her rock. A sharp piece slices her palm. Rose grits her teeth, spotting the lumpy stone, and snatching it up. When she spares a glance back at the fight, a streak of something red and wet has found its way across Missy’s cheek. She winces.

Jo shrieks, and all heads turn to her. She shakes a hand. “ _Ow_ ,” she says. “My _thumb_.”

“We talked about that—” Missy chides.

“—I know—”

“You can’t tuck it in!”

“I know!”

An officer jumps into Rose’s field of view and by the time they step away, Missy is gone again. Rose pushes past another officer, scanning the fight for Missy, her heart pounding in her ears, the crashing and grunting in the room almost too much to bear. A rough hand grabs her wrist, and she glances over to see a snarling Belrillian, the feathers on the side of their face spread in a wide fan as they raise their other hand against her.

“Get off me!” Rose shrieks, tugging her hand away, smashing the rock against the officer’s armored shoulder with a clang. They grab her wrist, twisting it, the rock dropping to the floor, and try to hold her still as she wriggles, trying to escape.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose spots Missy, only a few steps away, and reaches out to her, scrabbling for her arm, her skirt, anything. She’s just a tad too far away, and Rose is forced to watch, helpless, as another officer steps up behind Missy, swinging something dark at her head with a loud crack. Missy crumples without protest.

Something pinches Rose’s upper arm, and the museum is plunged into black.

* * *

“Naptime’s over, love.”

Rose stirs at the finger jabbed into her arm. Her head hurts, a stabbing pain behind her eyes, and her mouth tastes horrid and dry. Her wrists feel heavy. She manages to mumble something completely incomprehensible, even to herself, and stumbles to her feet. The light is blinding. “What’s it,” she says, more clearly this time.

“There we go,” says Missy, and Rose turns her head to look. Her blouse is crumpled and her peacoat is nowhere to be found, her pussy bow noticeably missing, makeup smeared past the point of saving, and an ugly bruise peeking from behind her collar. Her hair has slipped free of its pins and floats around her head in all its curly, bushy glory. “Enjoyed your beauty sleep?”

“Shut it,” Rose retorts. She takes a moment to take stock of the small room the four of them are pressed into. And there _are_ four of them—Jo and Clara are against the other wall, exchanging small talk. There’s a weight on Rose’s hands, and she looks down at them, bound by cuffs which blink a sickly green. The others are all wearing them too, she notes, and they’re all connected together by a long, thin chain. One long window is curved around the room, and Rose realizes it’s not a room at all but a small spaceship. Feeling more lucid, she recognizes the rumble of the engine beneath her feet. She shivers at the air conditioning and shuffles closer to Missy. Their handcuffs clang together.

“I’m not cuddling you for warmth,” Missy snaps.

“You’re a bad girlfriend,” says Rose.

“I’m aware.”

Rose kicks a shoe against the ground, examining the coppery splotches of discolored flooring, and hopes it isn’t what she thinks it is. The ship smells like chlorine and gasoline and Missy’s peach perfume. She peeks through her hair over to the other two, across the shuttle, and Clara makes a heart shape with her hands, mouthing something like _I’d cuddle you!_ Rose’s face heats up again. “Congratulations, by the way,” she says loudly, averting her gaze.

“Hm?”

“You got us arrested.”

“And it wasn’t even the most interesting birthday of yours I’ve been to,” Jo interrupts, cheerily. “My thumb still hurts, though.”

Missy snorts. “Yes, well, the next time the Doctor and her TARDIS are flung in prison, you can toddle off and spend a week on Delta Psi, if you care so much.”

“Oh, wow, could we really,” says Clara dryly.

Rose leans closer to Missy, soaking up whatever body heat she can, hiding her face in the foreverness of Missy’s hair. “No trial,” she says, her voice slightly muffled.

“No,” says Missy. “You’re with Belrilles’ most wanted. I’m a celebrity around here.”

“Didn’t you kill the president?” Clara asks.

“Did them all a favor, really. Besides, it’s easier this way.”

“And illegal,” says Jo.

“How do you know her, again?” Rose asks, and Missy simply pops her lips.

“Okay,” says Clara, a note of challenge distinctly cut in her voice. “You did it. We’re going to prison without a trial. Hurrah. Now what?”

“Not telling you.”

“You know, you really can be an absolute—”

Clara’s insult is cut off as a garbled, thickly accented voice echoes over the loudspeaker, and both Clara and Jo gasp. “We are now approaching our destination.”

“Behind you,” says Clara, urgently.

Rose pulls away from Missy and twists her neck around to peer through the transport window behind her. A space station has come clearly into view. Rose has the overwhelming need to declare to someone _that’s no moon_.But nobody could mistake the prison for a moon.It is boxy and ugly and grey, mismatched lights silently blaring its existence for the galaxy to see, and it gets bigger as the ship nears its destination, until it fills the window completely, blocking out all view of anything else.

A Belrillian guard steps into the room. They're built like a brick shithouse, strong and broad-shouldered, with white scar tissue tracing across both their top and bottom right eyes. “Time to go,” they grumble.

“Are you warm? In your uniforms,” asks Jo, cheekily. “I know you guys have all the feathers and everything, but it really is quite cold for us fleshy people and I was just wondering if they had down, or fleece, or something?”

The guard glares.

“Right. Big scary prison. Got it.”

The guard reaches down and unfastens the end of the chain that connects them all and gives it a hard tug. Missy yelps as Rose stumbles into her, colliding with her shoulder.

The transport door slides open and Rose shivers as a gust of even colder air rushes in. The loading deck beyond is empty, save for the prison transport the guard is now tugging them out of, and an unnerving, oppressive silence rests on the room, stifling her. Their footsteps ring against the concrete floor.

Rose notices a pair of signs on the wall, one bright, the other fading and chipping away. The first reads PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE FOOD IN THE PARKING DOCK. The second, more eerily, THIS WAY FOR NEW ENTRIES. COUGH INTO YOUR HANDKERCHIEF. She shivers, although she doesn’t think it’s from the cold. She had known the prison was an old plague colony, but for some reason––

Well. Somehow she didn’t think the ghosts would still be here.

They’re walked past a fleet of hulking ships, sitting empty and powered-down like old dead monsters, and doors both huge and human-sized. _Alien-sized_ , Rose corrects herself. The guard leads them through a small one and into a glowing room where he hooks the chain to the wall and leaves, still without a word.

“Alright,” chirps another guard, their arms crossed, standing in the corner still as a statue from the Belrilles museum art wing. They spring to life and begin to unchain Clara, then Jo, then Rose. The wink they give Rose with one of their four eyes is more unsettling than comforting. “Let’s see. Extra-small. Extra-small. Small. Small.” They pull out a set of folded clothes from the shelves embedded into the walls and toss them at each woman in turn. “Put those on.”

Rose flushes hot and pulls at her shirt with two fingers. “In… here?” She doesn’t quite know how to feel about stripping in front of the Belrillian, not to mention Clara Oswald.

“Shut up,” says Clara, pulling her shirt over her head. Rose is careful to avert her eyes, but catches the gentle curve of her ribs anyway, the way her bra hugs her chest.

Undressed, Rose shivers, the hairs on her arms standing on end. She is quick to dress herself, even though the fabric itches and rubs uncomfortably and is too long on the sleeves. A trickle of artificial light runs along the fabric of the sleeves, assembling itself into blocks of color around Rose’s wrists: yellow and dark green. Symbols form across Rose’s breast, spelling her name, and the words BAD WOLF underneath, as if the name is an alias instead of a rather painful memory.

“Not bad,” says Missy, and Rose spins around to face her. The same blocks are formed around her sleeve, but they reach her shoulders, a rainbow of reds and yellows and greens and blacks. Round Gallifreyan is marked on her chest, with the words THE MISTRESS spelled underneath.

“What are they?” Rose says, picking at a loose string at her wrist, gesturing at the colors.

Missy grins, and too many of her teeth show, sharp and white. “Crimes.”

The guard doesn’t bother chaining them again, and Rose takes notice of the chunky blaster gun strapped to their waist. They just say, “Are we done?” and step outside of a door opposite the entrance. With a quick glance around at the others, Rose follows him. They’d be stupid not to.

Beyond is the rest of the prison, Rose supposes. It’s shaped like a cylinder, cell blocks running around each level, prisoners inside with blocks of color—documentation of crime, she supposes—up to their elbows.

“Oswald, Oakdown,” says the Belrillian, jabbing a thumb at a cell. “That you?”

Missy’s eyebrows quirk. Clara’s lips thin.

“Yes,” says Clara.

“In you go. Grant, Tyler?”

The next cell block over is exactly the same as all the rest. Rose and Jo step inside, and a feeling of dread settles over Rose’s shoulders as the cell bars lower. It almost seems like the guard is trapped behind them, from this angle.

The guard waves, smiles carnivorously. “Sleep well,” they say.

Rose thinks she should feel something once they’re gone. Instead, an overwhelming sense of numbness settles over her. She sits down on the floor and leans against the wall, studying the alien languages scratched there, as a record of the cell’s previous occupants. “Hey,” she says.

Jo sits on one of the two pallets in the corner. “Hey,” she says cautiously.

“Hey,” says Rose again, nodding. The prison-mandated boots the Belrillian gave them have thin soles, and she can feel the bumps of the floor press against the bottoms of her feet through her socks. “Nice prison, huh?”

“Very welcoming.”

Rose laughs, plays with a strand of hair between her fingers. “You sound thrilled to be here.”

Jo looks away, and Rose wonders if she’s said something wrong. “Sarah’s going to be worried if I never come home,” she says, and her voice is almost steady enough to be convincingly calm. She looks small and young in the darkness of the cell.

“Sarah?” asks Rose, and remembers. “Your wife, right?”

“Girlfriend. Yeah. I was just… the Doctor phoned us… and she’s just… she said you were from two thousand and five.” The words are awkward and round floating in the air. “I’m from nineteen eighty-four.”

“Oh,” says Rose.

“I’m probably awfully old when you’re alive. If we ever get out of here.” She fiddles with the patchy blanket. “She sure is something, that Doctor of yours.”

Rose twists her wedding ring at the thought of her. “She’s a right arsehole sometimes.”

Jo grinned, wrapping her arms around herself. “She _is_ an arsehole sometimes!”

Rose took a deep breath. She thinks about the Doctor waking her up at three AM, and the Doctor interrupting her to lecture, and the Doctor not caring about feelings, and the Doctor being rude to everyone she met, and Rose wants to cry. “I miss her, though.”

Jo reaches out a hand, as if to pat Rose on the shoulder, but she’s too far away. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Not your fault.”

“No, it isn’t.” Jo hesitates, as if about to admit something terrible, and bursts out, “I honestly don’t know _whose_ fault it is, though, because Missy won’t actually tell me anything?”

Rose stands, her legs wobbly, and makes her way over to the pallet next to Jo. She is pretty sure she can feel a bug moving in the blanket, but she ignores it, and loops her arm through Jo’s to hug her close, more for her own benefit than the other woman’s. “She… stole something. From the Belrilles museum. Like us.” (Rose remembers the Doctor’s sunny grin as she explained the concept of _repatriation_ ). “The police weren’t thrilled to find out that her previous ‘couples bonding activity’ with Missy involved more crime.”

“Romantic,” says Jo, nodding along.

“I guess so.”

Jo lies back, stares at the ceiling, and after a moment Rose follows suit. There are several concerning patches of discoloration across the surface. “It’s cold,” says Jo.

“It is,” says Rose. She pulls the ragged blanket over herself and grimaces. “Do you want to—I mean, if you’re cold, too—”

Jo drags her blanket over and cuddles up beside Rose. Her warmth is familiar and sweet, and if Rose closes her eyes she can pretend that Jo is Missy, or the Doctor. “Sleep well, Rose.”

“Sleep well, Jo,” says Rose, although she is convinced neither one of them will do anything of the sort.

* * *

The light is too bright when Rose wakes up, and it shoots a flare of pain through her brain. She thinks, at first, that the Doctor and Missy are conspicuously missing from their bed, and then she hurts all over again when she remembers the arrest, the prison, the cell.

“Hi,” says Jo from the corner. She is sitting by the bars, her cheek pressed onto them, and Rose bites back a comment about the cleanliness of that. “There’s a guard coming around unlocking doors.”

Rose yawns. “I hope that means it’s nearly breakfast.”

A guard dressed in stark black stands in front of their cell and peers at the wall next to their cell door. It beeps, and the door slides open. “Behave yourselves,” they bark. “Downstairs. One serving. No fighting.” They continue on to the next cell.

Rose pulls herself together, consciously tucking away anxiety for the moment, and steps into the hallway with Jo. It’s the closest thing to freedom she’s had since their arrest at the museum yesterday, and she bounces on her heels, trying to enjoy it.

Missy is leaning against a wall next to Clara outside. Her hair looks, if possible, even bigger than the night before, and her makeup is completely gone, save for a few black smears beneath her eyes. She looks as if she hasn’t slept at all. Clara, on the other hand, looks fresh and well-rested, her cheeks pink, as if something happened in the cell that Rose was not privy to.

“Morning, twits,”Missy says. “Ready to find the Doctor?”

“How about we find food, first?” Rose counters.

Missy’s nose wrinkles. “If we must.”

Rose had noticed the cylindrical design of the prison’s interior earlier, but would have thought that there would be some large hidden staircase or elevator to get to the bottom floor, if the prisoners were allowed to leave their cells at all. Instead, the floor outside of the cells slopes gradually down all the way around, twirling around like a corkscrew.

The bottom floor is larger than expected, and Rose just prevents herself from making a _bigger on the inside_ joke.She snorts as she looks around the main room—it’s like a high school canteen, but with aliens, divided into two sections via paint on the floor. In the other section, prisoners scoop purple goo out of large grey tubs into other tubs.

Rose finds the food, which seems to be grey sludge that smells like rotting fish.“Hello!” she says brightly, and someone in prisoner’s garb glares back at her, their crimes circling their wrist twice. She laughs nervously. In front of her, Jo’s shoulders meet her ears. “Proper… uh… morning, we’re having, hm? Lovely, really.”

The person scoops the sludge into a bowl and slides it to Rose, their expression remaining completely flat.

“Thanks, mate.” Rose takes the bowl, and slips backward on an unexpectedly wet part of the floor, her heart dropping into her stomach as she collides into something tough. “Bollocks,” she mutters as she finds her footing, managing not to spill any of her food.

The tough thing behind her moves, turning out to be another prisoner, built like a huge person with a rhinoceros’ head. Rose wonders if they’re some kind of rogue Judoon. “Sorry,” she says, scanning her eyes down their arms.

Their crimes fill up their forearm to their elbow, mostly black and red. As she looks, they growl, “ _Get out of my way_.”

“I’m so sorry, sir,” Jo says, just behind her. “Really, it was a mistake, I must’ve scared her…”

The rhino’s gaze doesn’t falter from Rose’s face. “You hit me,” they say.

“Just tripped. Accidentally,” says Rose.

“You hit me,” they repeat, their voice dropping into a low, dangerous tone.

Rose backs away. “Sorry. So, so sorry about that. Um, have a fantastic morning!” She grabs Jo’s hand and bolts.

They slip into the crowd, and find a table tucked away at the far end of the room, settling down to eat. The benches are uncomfortable and too tall, the table too high, and Rose has to stretch for her bowl. She eyes a spoonful of sludge warily, before shoving it in her mouth. It actually tastes less like fish than it smells, but the texture is awful—weird gravelly lumps that stick in her throat. Rose can’t bring herself to finish her bowl, and neither can Jo.

“Enjoying the menu?” a guard says. “We need more prisoners at the tubs.”

Rose glances over. “Uh—”

“Not a request,” the guard growls, and Rose and Jo jump off the bench.

Missy and Clara are already by a grey tub wearing bright matching rubber gloves and exchanging heated words.

Rose slips on an extra pair of gloves and watches the other prisoners find thick strings of goop in the purple gel-like substance within the tubs. “What are we doing?” she hisses to Clara.

“According to the very impolite woman I spoke to, something to do with brain matter.” She examines a stringy bit of goo that she’s extracted from the tub. “It doesn’t look like brain to me.”

Missy clears her throat. “The Doctor is being kept on another level,” she says. “Most likely high-security.”

“How do you know?” says Clara, twirling her finger idly in the goo, sending gentle ripples through the tub. “We just woke up.”

“Her telepathic signal is missing, my dear, _human_ Rose.” Missy lifts her hand and waves it near her temple, and goo drips across the grey concrete floor. “There might be something here dampening it, or she might have hidden herself accidentally—she failed telepathic communication too many times to hide on purpose—but I’d assume she caused some trouble and they locked her up…” Missy waggles her eyebrows. “Elsewhere.”

Rose finds a long strand of goo and wraps it around her hands, scooping it into a bucket by her feet. “We’re going to look for her, right?”

Missy rolls her eyes. “No,” she says dryly. “We’re going to play poker with the lunch-lady. _Yes,_ we’re going to look for her.”

“Oh, hush, all of you,” says Clara.“Let’s play a game. Er, I spy—”

“Goo?” asks Jo.

Clara deflates a bit. “Maybe. I spy… something grey.”

“The floor,” Jo guesses. “The prison. Our outfits.”

“Missy’s moral code,” Rose chips in, fishing another strand from the tub.

Missy tuts. “I believe my moral code is actually quite clear; it simply involves more knives and explosions than most people think polite.”

“Have you ever been in this jail before?” says Rose.

“With the Doctor, once.” Missy peers around, as if searching for the memory of the two of them, younger, with fresher faces. “We kissed on one of these tables, I think, I just can’t remember which one.” She frowns.

Rose remembers the last time she kissed the Doctor. Over breakfast, as the Doctor chatted about her planned heist. She had tasted like orange juice and she had squeezed Rose’s hand afterward. Rose licks her lips now, as though the remnants of the Doctor’s kiss, the softness of her mouth, might still linger on her skin.

She coughs down the lump in her throat, blinks away the burning in her eyes, and says, “I spy…”

* * *

Lunch is the same as breakfast, though Rose manages not to offend another inmate in the queue this time. She starts telling Jo, Clara, and Missy about a number of terrible dates she’d been on before meeting the Doctor, and before dating Mickey: the boy who had brought his cousin to all three of their dates, the boy who had claimed that the demon possessing him was allergic to salt, the boy who had eaten the needles off the Christmas tree when she had brought him home, the girl who had chopped off strands of her hair and tossed them in the ocean for Poseidon.

She is in the middle of describing the boy who had taken her to his grandfather’s funeral for their first date when loud footsteps trundle up behind her and a voice booms, “You spilled porridge on me.”

Rose nearly falls out of her seat. The alien from before is standing there, glaring down at them, arms crossed. She glances down at her still mostly-full bowl, thinking privately that it’s far too sludgey to qualify as porridge—or gruel, or oatmeal, for that matter.

“That was me!” says Jo too loudly.

“It wasn’t,” says Rose.

Clara and Missy’s eyes flick between the three of them, the rhino and the two small women. Missy mouths something to Clara that looks suspiciously like _Drama in the sludge fandom?_

The alien swings a fist at Rose, and Rose ducks out of the way just in time, scrambling out of her seat and glancing around for something that might look like a weapon. Her hand closes around her spoon and she brandishes it in front of her like a sword. “Leave us alone,” she spits, focusing on keeping her hand steady and her expression fierce.

Missy snatches the spoon out of her hand, and Rose darts back as she slams it against the tabletop, snapping the head clean off, the new edge jagged and sharp. The alien lunges forward again, and Missy jabs the end of her new weapon into their arm. All Rose can hear is her own ragged breathing, but as the alien screams, the noise pierces her ears, and she covers them with her hands, ducking her head down. Missy shoots her an unreadable look, and yanks the spoon out of the alien’s flesh, pressing it against the delicate pinkish grey skin of their throat.

“Hello,” says Missy. “Are you going to make this easy for me, or am I going to have to poke around in that mushy brain of yours?”

The alien grunts.

“Mmm. Lovely. First question: what do they call you around here?”

“Me?” The alien hesitates. “Timothy.”

Missy squints at him. “Timothy.”

Timothy gulps, nods.

“Well, Timothy. Where might a nice girl like me find a proper knife in a place like this?”

“We’re not here for knives,” Clara snaps at her, standing up and pushing away from the table. A small crowd had gathered during the commotion, and she elbows her way through, coming to stand next to them.

Missy sniffs. “Fine. Is there any chance you’ve seen a small blonde woman? Loud, fleshy, morally uptight, emotionally constipated, horrible sense of style…? Her name is the Doctor.”

“The Doctor,” the alien repeats. “There was someone here who called herself that. She tried to start a riot and overthrow the guards.” They grin. “Almost succeeded, too.”

Rose almost laughs. _A prison riot_ —of course. It was so like her. “What happened to her?” she asks.

“They threw ’er downstairs, eventually.”

Clara snaps her head up. “Downstairs?”

“That’s where they put the problem prisoners. The ones they plan to transfer, before the transfer ships get here. The ships haven’t gotten here yet, so she’s probably in cryo—”

“No,” Missy says with a saccharine smile, pressing the edge of the spoon deeper into the alien’s neck, a small trickle of blood dripping down to the collar of their shirt. Rose winces despite herself. “Try again. The popular method of cryogenics here, in this timestream, aren’t nearly advanced enough to freeze a Time Lord.”

“They’ve, um, got a few cells down there, I think,” says the alien.

Missy doesn’t quite look satisfied, but she nods briskly. “And the knives.”

“No knives,” Jo interjects.

“Where are the knives?” asks Missy again, ignoring the correction.

“The kitchen, maybe? Door by the food?”

Missy clicks her tongue and her arm relaxes, the jagged edge of the spoon dropping from the alien, and in that split second they dodge away. They barrel towards Clara, who neatly steps aside and grabs their arm, twisting it behind their back. “Sorry,” she says, sounding the opposite of apologetic. Rose purses her lips, unsure whether to sort her current emotion into _disturbed_ or _somewhat turned on_.

“Mm,” says Missy, addressing the gawking onlookers. “Now that that’s taken care of, I do hope the rest of you will learn to be more polite when speaking to my—assistants. Now shove off.”

Clara releases the alien, who slips away into the dispersing crowd. “Are we going to find your wife, now?” she asks Missy.

Missy smiles, showing too many of her teeth, and Rose can’t decide if the feeling stirred in her is fear or something more exciting. “ _We,_ ” she says, “Are going to find some _knives._ ”

To a Belrillian prisoner, the knives in the kitchen are essentially impossible to reach. To Missy, a Gallifreyan criminal with thousands of years of experience and three pets to impress (in her words), they are obtained, cleaned, and stashed in boots in a matter of half an hour.

Missy gently coaches Jo on how to properly stab someone in the canteen and Rose is watching Jo’s uncomfortable, slightly terrified reactions with dull amusement when Clara grabs her hand and interlaces their fingers. Rose flushes.

“Would you like to go find the Doctor?” says Clara.

Rose takes a moment to remember the word _yes._ “Right-o,” she says instead. Her tongue feels like it’s five times too big in her mouth. “Er, I mean, brill… yes… let’s!” She squeezes Clara’s hand. Clara squeezes back.

The door downstairs is hidden adequately; which is to say, there are lots of doors and none of them are helpfully labeled ‘downstairs.’ Most line the far wall, past the bubbling goo tubs, guarded by Belrillians who silently pace back and forth in front of them. “We could distract them,” says Rose.

Clara chews her lip, and Rose tears her eyes away. “I don’t know. It seems weird they’d put the only door to the top-secret high-security level where the prisoners could see. What if they break through?”

“It could be a threat,” Rose suggests.

“Still. There’s gotta be some kind of… back door…” Clara trails off. “In the docking bay. There were all those doors.”

“You think there’s a door downstairs over there?”

Clara shrugs. “It’s worth checking, right? The docking bay seemed pretty empty. It’s not like there’s any reason for prisoners to try to use it to escape.” She reaches out with her other hand to tap Rose lightly on the tip of her nose, grinning. “Let’s go.”

If anything, the loading dock is even quieter and emptier than it was when the prison transport first arrived. Only one Belrillian guards the entrance, and they wander away for a moment when another comes up and mutters something about the third moon, giving Clara and Rose an opportunity to slip past.

Most of the doors inside are marked with useless functions, or last names, and the rest seem to be supply closets, save for the very last. It’s big, tucked away in a dim corner, embellished with strange scratchy symbols, and very definitely locked. Clara crouches down to squint at the keyhole. “…Ten quid, I can pick this.”

“There’s no way,” says Rose, although she’s intrigued.

Clara taps her fingernail against the door. “Mechanical. Come on, I can hack this. Ten quid.”

Rose considers, narrows her eyes. “It’s alien technology.”

“I dated a Belrillian girl once.” Clara waggles her eyebrows and waves her hand across the lock, projecting a bright blue keypad across the door. “Fifteen if I can do it quickly and we don’t get caught.”

“Fine,” Rose concedes, grinning. “Fifteen.”

Clara squints and taps on the keypad, pulling up lines of code written in a language Rose can’t make sense of. Rose watches her slender, clever fingers with a hungry curiosity, her heart taking up space in her throat. She hadn’t known that pretty girls being good with technology was so very attractive to her, although it makes sense: the Doctor. Missy.

“Hey,” says Clara. “Hey.”

Rose snaps out of whatever sapphic trance she’s fallen into to see the door has swung open, revealing an unlit hallway beyond. “Hey,” she says.

“Something wrong?”

“No! Of course not. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine. You’re really, _really_ good at that,” she gushes, twisting her hands. “God, what am I saying? I’m rambling. I’m sorry for rambling. I owe you money.”

Clara steps forward, cups her jaw, smiles. Rose thinks she might never be sad again, and then immediately feels guilty, thinking of the Doctor locked up somewhere in the impenetrable darkness past the strangely marked door. “No need,” Clara says, and presses her lips against Rose’s: there and gone in one swift motion. She steps away. “That should be good.”

“Cool,” says Rose. Her heart feels so full she wonders if it’s going to burst, leaving blood and heart bits all over the concrete floor.

“Cool,” says Clara, evidently amused by Rose’s idiocy. “After you?”

The space past the door is just as dark, and colder than the docking bay. Something runs over Rose’s foot, a bare tail brushing her ankle, with too many tiny distinct feet. She gasps. “Is there a light switch?” she asks, her voice strangled.

“I’ll check.”

A line of weak, flickering lightbulbs blink on above their heads, illuminating a ridiculous amount of dust. Whatever creature had scuttled over her is gone, and Rose can’t decide if it’s a good thing or not that she can’t see it. She reaches out for the Doctor’s hand, on instinct, and Clara takes it.

They walk in silence for a while, passing several unoccupied cells, similar to the ones upstairs. On these doors, along with the face ID screen, there is a small round, metal circular ring. Rose squints at them, but can’t figure out if they serve a purpose beyond terribly uninteresting decor.

“You’re worried about her,” says Clara suddenly, and Rose’s shoulders raise.

“Of course I’m worried about her,” says Rose. An image of the Doctor in dirty prison clothes, her face bloodied and streaked with grime, arises unbidden in her head. “She’s my wife. She’s in jail. She’s somewhere, sitting in rat droppings… rats with too many legs.”

“Yeah,” says Clara. “No. I meant Missy.”

Rose quirks her eyebrows, incredulous. “Why would I be worried about Missy? She’s having a grand old time playing with knives with her daughter, or whatever.”

“You know what she’d do for the Doctor,” Clara says, and her grasp on Rose’s hand tightens. “You know that the Doctor’s always okay, but—”

“Missy’s always okay, too.”

“Sometimes it’s different, though.”

Rose stares at the bulb a few steps away as it buzzes and flashes. She refuses to respond.  
“You know if it comes down to it, it’ll be the Doctor,” says Clara, gently.

“Fine,” says Rose. “Maybe I’m a little bit—”

A pair of loud footsteps sounds behind them, two indistinct voices echoing in the corridor. Clara pulls Rose roughly into a small nook, their bodies pressing together. “…but if that woman sings in our faces one more time, I’m requesting a transfer to the upper levels,” says one of the Belrillians walking by.

“ _It’s her,_ ” Rose mouths.

Clara nods, and they step out of the nook to follow the guards down the hallway.

They come to a stop in front of one of the cells.“She’s asleep,” one of them says

“Good,” the other one chuckles. “Leave her the food. We’ll be going.”

Rose snatches her hand away from Clara and lunges forward. The Doctor is there, her Doctor, alive and vibrant and singing like she always did. Rose wants to see her and wrap her arms around her, kiss her until their faces are matching shades of blue. Clara reaches for Rose’s arm, but Rose shoves her away in the heat of the moment, and Clara cries out.

The guards stop and turn. “What was that?” the first one says.

Clara ducks back into the nook, yanking Rose along with her. She presses a finger against Rose’s lips as the guards storm past.

“Who’s there?” one of them shouts. Their voice echoes in the dark passageway.

“Was that you?” the other one says, looking into the cell. “Ay. Wake up.”

The prisoner mumbles something. Rose strains to identify her voice: is it the Doctor?

“Hey, you. Did you make a noise?”

“What? Maybe. I don’t know.” A woman, British, but the edges, region, is unclear from this distance. “Uh…” She coughs. “Yes! That was me. I made the noise. Now bugger off.”

Joy bolts through Rose, and she can’t help but bounce on her toes, grinning. “That’s the Doctor,” she whispers. “That’s her!”

“Shut up!” hisses Clara, but her own smile is clear and shining even in the darkness of the downstairs floor.

“Fine,” the guard says. “But cause a disturbance again, and no supper for you.”

“Oh no,” the Doctor says dryly.  
Rose holds her breath, waiting for the Belrillians to pass by again so they can visit the Doctor, say hello. So she can see the Doctor again. She’s almost overwhelmed by the idea: see the Doctor. Be with the Doctor. Her Doctor.

The Belrillian guards don’t pass by again.

“Can we go?” Rose whispers. “They might have gone on past her.”

“I don’t think we should,” says Clara. “It’s her, though. It’s really her.”

“It’s really her,” agrees Rose, and takes a deep breath. She is breathing the same air as the Doctor.

For now, that will have to be enough.

* * *

When they manage to creep away, Missy and Jo are in the canteen. Missy is sitting on the table, her legs crossed, explaining some convoluted concept of genetics with animated hand gestures, as Jo nods along politely and twists a strand of hair between her fingers. “Rose! Clara! Thank _God,_ ” she says. “Did you find her?”

“Good news,” says Clara.

“Great news,” Rose interrupts. “We found her!”

“You found her,” says Missy, sliding off the table and rushing up to Rose. “She’s okay? Unharmed? Was she injured? Does she need a new sonic screwdriver?”

Clara sticks out a pitiful bottom lip. “Aww, look who’s worried.”

“Aww,” says Missy, a mockery of Clara’s mockery. “You want to wake up without fingernails.”

“She’s downstairs,” says Rose loudly, for her and Jo’s sake. “We didn’t see her, but she sounds okay. She doesn’t know we’re here.” Rose remembers that change in the Doctor’s inflection, how she said, _“Yes, that was me.”_ “I mean, not entirely.”

Missy snaps her attention to Rose. “How do the cells work?”

“I don’t know.” Rose strains to remember: the screen, the circle. “No, wait—facial ID. And there was something else on the door. Like, this flat metal ring… thing… I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

Missy gives her a sharp look. “Describe the ring.”

“It was round, and there was a smaller dot inside,” says Clara, saving Rose from stammering something disjointed. “Like a bull’s-eye. And there was a little blinking… LED, thing, above it.”

Missy turns to Jo, those bright blue eyes piercing, a dancing amusement hidden behind them. “Now, Miss Grant, let’s hypothesize. What might that be?”

“Some kind of secondary identification system?” Jo throws up her hands. “Why are you asking me?”

“Of course it’s a secondary identification system.” Missy walks over to the table, sits on the top, twiddles her thumbs. She makes a somewhat encouraging nod-like motion. “What if the smaller circle extends?”

“A needle!” Jo exclaims.

“ _Very_ good.”

Jo waves her arms. “Blood ID!”

“Genius!” Missy bursts forward, as if attempting to embrace her, but instead shoots her an awkward thumbs-up.She steps back almost immediately, clearing her throat.

Rose and Clara exchange a look: _This is all very sweet, but let’s get on with the show?_ Rose licks her lips, remembering the kiss. Thinks about doing it again. Corrects her thoughts, tries to force her face into a presentable expression. “Hahah,” she says, aloud, and then bites her tongue.

“Clara,” says Missy. “I need you to hack the ID system. Probably from the source. If your little human brain can handle it?”

“I think I can manage.”

“Miss Grant, what are your feelings, morally, about stealing blood?” Missy’s face is too hopeful for the words passing her lips.

Jo winces. “Bad. How are we supposed to…?”

“Gratuitous violence.How else? Rose, make sure Clara gets there, however you can. Provide distractions. Chat up the guards. And keep an eye on us, if you can find any cameras. You two have forty minutes, don’t stay up there licking each other’s mouths, or whatever.Miss Grant, you remember what I said about stabbing?” says Missy, sweetly.

“I wish I had a normal father,” Jo grumbles.

* * *

Where might two human girls find the control panel of the entire prison ID system? Clara and Rose check their cells, but Clara finds nothing. “I’m beginning to think we might need the map of the jail,” says Clara.

“A guard might have it,” Rose says. “Because it’s a very large jail.”

Clara studies her for a moment. Rose wonders what she’s thinking. “That’s a very good idea,” she says finally.

Rose flushes from her nose to her toes.

She walks up to the guard in the canteen. _Smile,_ she reminds herself. _Smile and talk._ “Rose Tyler,” she says, sticking out a hand.

The guard studies her arm. “Can I help you?” they say, their tone inscrutable.

Her arm lowers. _Smile and talk._ “The work can’t be good here. Staying on a remote space station for such a long time… I don’t envy you.”

“I’m not the prisoner here.”

Rose shrugs. “Still. How’s your pay?” She watches Clara out of the corner of her eye as she sneaks up behind the guard, pointing at their back pocket. Clara makes a rolling hand motion— _keep going_. “What about a union? I heard some guys complaining about working conditions earlier—”

They cut her off. “What?”

“A, erm…” Rose loses her train of thought as Clara’s hand reaches out and then withdraws slowly, a map clasped in her hand. “You should hold a strike. Show your bosses who really does the work around here. They can’t run this place without you!”

The guard squints their bottom set of eyes, the other pair remaining closed. “I suppose.”

“I just think you deserve to be treated like a human… like a Belrillian citizen ought to be. Shorter hours, and whatnot. Do you ever get to visit family?” Rose rambles, as she watches Clara step back, her heel landing on the fabric of one of her trouser pants. “Oh, no.”

“Shorter hours,” muses the guard.

Their interest encourages her. “Yeah! More time for you to go on holiday. Stuff like that.”

“Well…”

Clara takes a step back, her foot tugging at her trousers. “No, no—watch out!” Rose yelps, interrupting her own conversation.

She stumbles, a loud “ _fuck!_ ” slipping past her lips, and the guard twirls around.

“Go, go!” says Rose.

Clara holds up the map, scanning it, and tosses it to Rose. It flutters to the ground; Rose can’t reach forward to catch it in time, and she catches Clara’s hand instead, shouts, “Run!”

The guard gives up the chase surprisingly quickly, abandoning them after a few levels of cells. “Well,” says Rose, catching her breath. “Did you see where it is?”

“Top level, I think. There’s a lift near the spot with the food in the canteen.”

“We can’t risk a lift,” Clara insists, leaning against the wall, running a hand through her chocolate-brown hair. Rose watches as it cascades over her shoulders despite knots and a smidge of grease. “There’ll be access codes and locks and things.”

“We can’t run all these stairs, though,” says Rose. “The guards come by every few minutes. They’ll catch up.”

They risk the lift.

One of the two guards in front is telling the other, “…And the boss is going to be angrier if we skip our post! You can go, but I’m not.”

“I didn’t say I was going.”

“You were leaving.”

“If they kill each other because we’re not there…”

“…Right, you’re going to stop the crazy woman from stabbing people.”

Rose catches Clara’s eye and mouths, _Missy?_ Clara shrugs. Rose assures herself: she’s gotten out of worse. She can survive a prison scrap. She’s armed and dangerous. She’s died before.

The guards are so absorbed in their bickering that Rose and Clara manage to sneak by undetected, stepping into the lift. The ride is short and leaves no room for discussion, and Rose is glad; she’s too busy twisting her hands and tapping her foot to remember how to make small talk.

The floor where they get out, second from the top, is less barebones than the rest of the prison. The ground is carpeted with a gold-and-red design, although it’s patchy in places and stains spot its surface. There are only a few guards, some out of uniform, playing cards in the corner. Hallways lead out of the room on both sides, and a large staircase is directly across from the lift, in full view of the guards.

The lift doors close.

“We’ll have to use those,” hisses Clara, pointing at the stairs.

Rose blinks at them. “That’s… insane,” she whispers. “Everyone’s going to see us. Even if no one’s looking now, it would just take one guard standing up to get water, and we’re…”

“Yes?” Clara repeats, planting a hand on her hip. She looks lovely, even after spending the night in a space prison, and Rose fights not to get distracted.

“We’re…” Rose says. It’s their only option, and she knows it. She just doesn’t _like_ it very much. “No, you’re right. The guards are all busy. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s the spirit,” says Clara.

Slowly, and then faster, they make their way across the break room. The guards appear too interested in their card game (and, to Rose’s delight, a casual conversation about getting better pay) to notice. “You were right,” laughs Rose, halfway up the steps.

“I didn’t think I would be,” Clara says. “I’m a bit annoyed that the light is so soft on you, by the way.”

Rose feels her cheeks heat up. “You look good, too.”

At the game table, one of the guards cries out. “You had a Crimson Tuna?” they exclaim.

“Beginner’s luck, I suppose,” says another guard, smugly.

“Well,” says the first guard, beginning to stand. “I did make a bet. Deal out the next round, I’ll be in my quarters.” They begin to swivel around to face the staircase, and Clara and Rose let out matching gasps.

“Don’t bother,” says a third. “Let’s play another round.”

The first guard laughs and sits down again. “I guess one more can’t hurt. Just so long as Vailen doesn’t cheat.”

“I wasn’t cheating!”

Clara and Rose near the end of the stairs. There’s a big metal door, reading, ‘CONTROL CENTER - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY - SECURITY CAMERA WATCHING YOU,’ with a doodle of a small camera underneath. The same kind of lock as on the door downstairs is secured underneath the doorknob, and Clara taps it to show the code again.

“Hurry,” Rose whispers.

“Oh, really?”

The noise of Clara tapping the door to hack the code seems unbearably loud. Rose keeps watch, as the guards play cards, sure they can hear it clear as day, but none of them look up.

One of the guards, the one who won the previous round, curses loudly. “What time’s it?”

“Third rotation. Half past second moon,” says a guard, placing a stack of cards on the tabletop.

They stand. “I’ll be back. My mum wanted me to phone her for her hatching day.”

“Right. See you.”

The guard turns, blinks at the staircase. Clara is crouched in front of the door, still coding, and Rose is standing in full view. She waves. “Prisoners?” they ask.

“Uh…” Rose scrambles for an explanation. “Someone… sent us?”

“Prisoners on the stairs,” says the guard, jogging towards them. “Stand completely still.”

The door swings open and Clara tugs Rose inside, locking the door behind them, as the guard shouts for backup.

The room is large and round, the walls layered with screens showing the feed for countless security cameras. There is a small door to the left, and a computer mounted on a tall table. Clara slides into the chair in front of the computer. “One of these screens has Missy and Jo. Find them. I’ll try to find the system that connects to the ID downstairs.”

“Aren’t you worried about…” Rose grimaces, looks back at the door. Muffled shouts and pounding emanates from the other side. “You know.”

“A bit, yes.”

“So…?”

“So I can’t do anything about it. Make sure Missy and Jo haven’t gotten themselves killed, please.”

Rose can’t find Missy and Jo on any of the screens around the room. She spots a leopard-shaped man with bat wings and teeth down to his chin standing on his hind legs; an alien with eyes all over their face and their hands; a prisoner with tentacles spilling from her lips who looks unnervingly like an Ood. A set of switches and buttons are embedded into the walls, and Rose presses one.

Music over the speakers begins to play. It’s “Tainted Love.” Rose purses her lips and presses the button again, instantly. Another switch dims the light romantically low. Another turns on the air conditioning.

Finally, one of the screens flickers, changing its display to the canteen. Rose studies the prisoners present carefully. None of them are Missy or Jo.

“What time is it?” Clara asks.

“Time?” Rose reflexively checks her wrist, but she isn’t wearing a watch. She scans the walls for a clock. A small button marked with numbers reveals words projected across the wall, and Rose reads them out: “Third rotation, ninety past second moon.”

Clara curses. “Eighteen minutes.” Clara’s fingers fly as she continues to type, muttering to herself.

Set on finding Missy and Jo, Rose wanders around the room, pressing buttons. She opens the small secondary door in the room, discovering buttons and a screen inside—a lift, she realizes. There’s a button below the first floor, for the high-security downstairs cells, probably. The cells where the Doctor is.

Rose runs out of buttons to press, Missy and Jo still nowhere in sight, and she finds herself silently watching Clara work. None of the lines of code make much sense, especially not in some alien coding language, but Rose is entranced by their movement, their formatting, their quiet beeping.

She is equally entranced by the girl manipulating them. Clara is gorgeous, mid-hacking: her fingers darting, her eyebrows crinkled together, the way she mouths and mutters to herself, the off-tune song she occasionally hums pieces of.

Clara glances over, those dark brown eyes meeting Rose’s own, and flashes a grin. Rose warms, remembers the way her mouth felt, the gentle kiss they shared just hours before. She feels guilty for a moment, thinking about the Doctor alone in a dark cell, but the Doctor would be flirting even more, and significantly more skillfully, especially with Clara.

Rose fights the desire to reach out and play with a strand of Clara’s chocolate-brown hair.

“Just a few more minutes,” says Clara.

“Take your time…”

Rose walks away again. Wanders. Frets. How is the Doctor doing now, she wonders. Is she okay? What if she despises them for taking too long? What if the guards have been treating her terribly? What if she’s regenerated, or dead, or missing, or something, by the time it takes Clara to finish?

Her worries are interrupted by a hand squeezing her shoulder. Rose jumps and whirls around. Clara is stood there, frowning.

“Sorry for startling you,” she says. “You seemed worried.”

Rose glances at the code, the computer. “You hacked alien technology in a matter of minutes,” she says, flushing all over again.

“I’m not done just yet. You just looked so concerned, I couldn’t…”

“You were right,” Rose interrupts. “It’s not all fun. It sucks. It’s awful, sometimes, and it’s all bad without the Doctor, and maybe I’m worried Missy is going to be reckless, or has been reckless, and that Jo is somewhere bleeding out, and that she’s going to get us stuck here forever. And the Doctor. And I’ll never see anyone again.” She looks away from Clara, picks at her nails. “I’m worried, yeah, so can you _please_ finish what you were doing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, the hacking,” Clara says. She doesn’t move.

Rose studies the scrap of pink nail polish on her thumb, left over from when Missy gave her and the Doctor manicures three weeks ago. “The hacking?” she says again.

“Yeah. I’ll be going.”

Rose finally looks up. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Yes.” Clara reaches out, draws her hand back as if burnt. “Do you… mind?”

“What?”

Clara steps forward, and Rose’s breath hitches in her throat. She reaches to cup Rose’s jaw, not quite touching her skin, those quick fingers a bare breath away. “I’m sorry it sucks,” she says. “Rose Tyler.”

Rose laughs. “Clara Oswald.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Rose leans forward to kiss her. Clara’s breath smells like grey goop and something strangely sweet, and her hands rest on Rose’s face, at long last, and—

Rose pulls away. “Fuck,” she says. “The Doctor. I mean, go. I mean, go hack, oh my God, I’m an idiot, go hack.”

“Hacking!” says Clara, loudly, pulling her hand away. “I will go hack. Code stuff. Yup.”

Rose nods. “You go,” she says, awkwardly, encouragingly.

“That doesn’t mean…” Clara trails off. “You still are… You still want to?”

Rose rubs the back of her hand across her mouth, self-conscious. “I do! Really.”

Clara flashes a thumbs-up and rushes back to the computer, coding, if possible, even faster than before. Rose stands behind her, poking at buttons near the computer. She looks up at the screen nearest to them.

Two women sit across from another alien, sipping tea, making small talk. Rose squints at their pixelated faces, their blurry hair: they are undeniably the Mistress and Josephine Grant.

Rose grins, takes a deep breath. They appear uninjured. They’re okay, she tells herself. They’re okay.

Clara spins around from the computer, rubbing her palms together. “Done,” she says. “Is that?”

“Yup.”

“And… that guy? Who attacked us earlier?”

Rose shrugs. “I think so.”

“So. Time to go find those two,” Clara says. “And break out your wife.”

Despite the many, many years the Doctor and Rose have been together, have been married, since she was tall and stripey and floppy-haired, a secret thrill runs through her when Clara says _your wife._ “Yeah,” she sighs.

“Um, about that. She is… I mean, I know you two have a more… _open_ relationship, but…”

“This is fine. Really. Promise. You and her have… history… already,” Rose assures.

“Right,” says Clara. “We’re off, then.” She walks away, heads towards the lift. The door slides open.

“Wait,” Rose says. “Before you go.”

Clara turns on her heels. “Yeah?” she asks.

Rose brushes the palm of her hand, feather-light, against Clara’s palm. “I wanted to do this,” she says. And finally, after the millennia of one bare kiss, and the Doctor downstairs, and the near-kiss just minutes before, she kisses Clara.

Properly.

* * *

The downstairs hallway is dark and cold as Clara and Rose’s first venture to the high-security cells. As far as Rose can tell, the lift has brought them to a different area of the downstairs level, and she peers into the darkness, as if hoping her eyes can pierce through the impenetrable darkness and spot the Doctor hidden somewhere far away.

Echoes of voices ring through the hallway, bouncing off the walls, and Rose startles. They don’t sound like the guards’ lilting Belrillian accents, though—Scottish, and slightly more old-fashioned English.

“Are you sure Rose is here?” the latter asks.

“I was, before you started _yapping_.”

Beside Rose, Clara breathes, “Missy?” as if afraid the women will transform into guards if she speaks with more volume. “Jo?”

“Did you hear that?” says the English woman.

“I don’t know, were you talking?”

“Missy?” repeats Rose, louder. “Jo? It’s us.”

“Shh!”

A bright, brilliant beam of light assaults Rose’s eyeballs for a moment, and Rose shields her face with her hand. When she can see again, Missy and Jo stand before her. “There you are,” says Missy. “I told you.”

“I didn’t disagree,” mumbles Jo.

A giddy, heady high rushes through Rose’s limbs, from her kiss with Clara or the Doctor’s proximity or seeing Missy again, and she rushes forward into Missy’s arms. Missy presses a sweet, solid kiss to Rose’s lips, and Rose’s light-headedness only surges: kissed by two pretty girls in a matter of minutes.

Jo clears her throat, obviously uncomfortable. “Which way is the Doctor? You saw her before, right?”

“We were… somewhere else.” Clara makes a similar grunting noise, deep in her throat. “Do you two mind?”

Rose steps away, face hot, and Missy offers her a wink. “Sorry.”

“The Doctor’s to the left,” says Missy. At her companions’ blank faces, she adds, “We passed some guards complaining about some blonde annoyance. I presume she’s _our_ blonde annoyance.”

The hallways are largely clear of guards, and with minimal trouble, they make it to a line of cells Rose vaguely recognizes.

“You got a blood sample?” Clara asks.

“Yes!” says Jo. “Timothy had some blood on him from a tussle with the guards.”

“Wait. Timothy?”

“Your rhino friend,” says Missy, stopping without warning. Rose almost crashes into her, raising a steadying hand to her shoulders. “Let’s split up and find her,” Missy says. “Don’t bother calling her name. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guards are somewhere close by.”

“Split up?”

Missy looks to Rose. “We’ll search faster that way. Cover more ground.”

Rose nods sharply.

She searches empty, dusty cells, her blood in her ears, tapping her own collarbone in a desperate attempt to calm herself. The Doctor is so close—tantalizingly so. Cruelly so.

Cell after cell turns up empty (one with a disturbing smear of discolored coppery brown across the floor). Rose’s thoughts become more jumbled, discombobulated. What if the Doctor has been relocated in the last few hours? Regenerated? Frozen? What if a ship came and brought her to a different prison?

“Rose?”

Rose whirls at the sound of her name.

After the Doctor was arrested, Rose had dreamed for days about what she would say to her when she finally saw her again. Failing that, what she would think. Some poetic inner monologue, she was sure, or some internal montage of their time spent together, or a simple desperation to hold her, be with her again.

Instead, Rose’s mind goes absolutely blank.

“Doctor?” she manages, after a conspicuous few moments.

The Doctor is there, behind the cell door. After so long, the Doctor is _there,_ in a cell, her shoulders dropping, her face softening. Her skin is smeared with grime and dirt, her uniform ripped, her hair greasy and browner than usual, her cheeks pale. She smiles. “I…” she says.

“One second,” says Rose, the words tumbling, spilling out of her, now that the first dam has been broken. “One second. I found her, I found her… Missy!”

She doesn’t look to see Missy and Clara and Jo come over. She finds that she can’t break her gaze from the Doctor, no matter how dirty she is. Rose watches, out of her peripheral vision, as Missy fiddles with the blood ID, holding a small bottle. She hears beeping, and it sounds celebratory, as the cell bars lower into the ground. It feels almost anti-climatic.

The Doctor seems to disagree. She bursts out of her cell with a frantic energy only the Doctor has ever been capable of, wrapping the nearest person to the now open cell—Jo Grant—in an embrace stronger than a dying sun’s supernova. Jo squeaks.

The Doctor finds Clara, kisses her lightly on the mouth, hugs her. Clara glances away, blushing, meeting Rose’s eyes with a toothy smile. Rose returns it.

She kisses Rose, finally, and her mouth is weirdly damp. “I missed you,” she whispers.

“I missed you, too,” says Rose. “Come say hello, Missy.”

“We don’t have time. It’s all right. I’ve seen her before, you know.”

“Mm. You’re an idiot,” says the Doctor, grabbing Missy and kissing her, tangling her hands in Missy’s voluminous caramel curls. “Thank you,” she says, kissing the tip of her nose, playfully.

“In front of everyone?” Missy protests.

The Doctor purses her lips, makes a movement as if to kiss her again, but footsteps from down the hall cut her off. “The guards aren’t scheduled to come back for ages.”

Clara winces. “I couldn’t turn off the security alarms. Sorry.”

“One job,” mutters Missy.

“The TARDIS is chained up in a ship on the docking bay,” says the Doctor. “We might have to make a detour to grab my sonic…”

“Can’t you build another?” Rose asks.

The Doctor falters. “Well…”

Missy crosses her arms, an impressive feat with the Doctor still pressed up so close to her. “My God, you’re going to have to get over yourself.”

“Fine,” says the Doctor, drooping.

“That’s the spirit.”

“You there!” shouts a guard. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

The Doctor curses, looks around. “Run,” she says, her hand closing around Rose’s.

* * *

The Doctor never doubted that Missy and Rose would save her. Some nights, the lonely loud ones when the prisoners fought or the guards argued for hours, she hoped they would hurry up; there were very occasional stretches of time when the Doctor wondered if somebody was going to have to carry her corpse out of the jail cell. (Perhaps a few doubts, then).

The Doctor is more surprised that her partners have formed her girl gang. (And brought along Josephine Grant). The Doctor is _most_ surprised to see that Missy seems to like the girl gang.

Of course, she had shoes to fill. Missy was probably pretending to be the Doctor, the best she could, and now that the Doctor would back she would return to her usual vitriolic, sarcastic self. It was for the best, anyway.

She marvels at Missy’s relatively kind commands as all five of them skid into the hangar. The familiar hum of the TARDIS’s telepathy finds its way back into the Doctor’s mind, purring as the Doctor mentally coddles and strokes it. The Doctor has missed her. She lets herself slip into a familiar fantasy, one that has accompanied her through her arduous days spent at the prison: falling asleep in a warm bed, sandwiched between Missy’s possessive clinging and Rose’s sweet cuddles.

The Doctor follows the TARDIS’s signal to the ship she’s been trapped in, its door labeled PRISONER VEHICLES in menacing capital sigils. The door is locked.

“Pick it,” Rose encourages Missy.

Missy exchanges a look with the Doctor. They come to the same conclusion almost instantly. “No time.”

“She’ll be all right,” says the Doctor, and begins to debate the TARDIS about following her exact instructions.

Through her concentration, she can hear Clara. “No short jumps, you said. You said, no short jumps, over and over again. What happened to no short jumps?”

“The Doctor,” says Missy. “Is a very bad pilot.”

The Doctor wastes a few seconds of precious time to insert an insulted “Hey!”

“She is incapable of keying her TARDIS into nearby coordinates. The TARDIS, however, should be fully capable of jumping to us on its own.” The Doctor feels Missy prod into her telepathic communication with the TARDIS. “If she can hurry up.”

The Doctor finds herself warming to this version of Missy. If this is what it takes for her to be educational and nice, the Doctor might consider getting arrested more often.

“Nothing’s happening,” says Rose.

“I’m trying—” says the Doctor.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you had another Gallifreyan who could help you out,” says Missy. “If you would just stop being so territorial about your precious _box_.”

“Yes. Wouldn’t that be nice.”

“You’re an idiot,” says Missy, as she slips into the Doctor’s mind and sets to work within their telepathic connection.“I’m filing for a divorce the second we leave.” The Doctor doesn’t protest the assistance, not with guards bearing down on the hangar, due to arrive any second.

The familiar grating noise of the TARDIS’s relocation sounds from within the ship, and the Doctor shoves Missy out of their connection.

“But it’s not _here_ ,” says Jo. “It’s not there, but it’s not _here_.”

Clara shoots a poisonous glare in Missy’s direction. “I’m going to strangle you if this is your fault.”

“You spoil me,” says Missy.

After an uncomfortably long minute, during which the Doctor internally chided the TARDIS, that same sound scraped behind them. The Doctor turned to see her lovely blue box, tall and utterly fantastic as always. The Doctor takes Missy’s hand, and without ceremony, the five of them step inside.

The Doctor takes some time to admire her, say hello again, as Missy sets the coordinates. The TARDIS whirrs in welcome, tucks herself into her familiar corner in the Doctor’s brain, and only moves the shower slightly closer than it normally is.

The Doctor looks up to find the room staring at her.

“We did it,” says Rose.

“We don’t have to eat grey sludge anymore,” Jo comments, sliding down to sit cross-legged on the floor.

Rose steps forward, grabbing the Doctor’s forearms, gazing into her eyes. “Hey,” she says, and they finally find a moment to be quiet together. “I really, really missed you.”

The Doctor is bad at saying things the way they need to be said, but with Rose—her Rose Tyler—she says, “I missed you every moment I was there. It’s so good to see you,” and presses a chaste kiss to her mouth, and then, letting herself relax, a longer one.  
From beside her, Missy clears her throat, and the Doctor twirls to face her. “You organized this all, didn’t you,” she says, softly, smiling.

Missy looks away. “So, everybody, I guess—”

“You did this,” says the Doctor.

Missy continues her refusal to meet the Doctor’s eyes, chews her lip, interlaces her fingers behind the Doctor’s back. “I don’t think I had much of an alternative option.”

The Doctor kisses her, long and lazy. They have all the time in the universe, now.

“Ah,” Missy says. “Right. Er…”

The Doctor kisses her again, as all the pieces of her that the Doctor had missed seep into her senses: the faint, lingering smell of her perfume, the way she always tastes slightly of blood and rust, her hands settling on the Doctor’s waist.

Missy gazes at her when she’s done, as if committing this face to memory. “I do get the point, and all,” she says. “And thank you, for that. But my dear, _dear_ Doctor.”

“Yes?”

“You taste absolutely horrific. Go take a bath.”


End file.
